The Museum of Water

Angela Readman’s poem ‘The Museum of Water’ has won the 2014 Charles Causley Poetry Competition. You can read the announcement and the other highly commended poems on the Charles Causley Trust’s website.

The Museum of Water

There is nothing we keep to remember
but water, our wavering wall of bottles

and jars, ripples of sun let the room shiver
whenever a door slams. We dip into drops

of light and feel we could drown. One
by one, we lift glassware and peer in at life

distilled: fingers of font, an hour we bathed
in love once – soapy pale as a pearl, crushed,

returning to the source that made it shine.
Our tears don’t look like much, barely fill

a hotel pot of jam. We lay them down
beside rain, bottles we clutched for our life

at the foot of a memory we hadn’t yet climbed,
as if knowing we would soon need the mist

on someone’s hair, beads of cold showers,
the blood of a snowman that melted so fast,

to splash on our faces, and drink, drink
until we are something like full.

Angela’s short story collection Don’t Try This At Home will be published by And Other Stories on 5th May.

Happy @UN #WorldPoetryDay - Did you know that last year's winner @KayoChingonyi's stunning debut 'Kumukanda' became only the second poetry collection in the prize's history to be crowned winner? Will poetry win out again this year? #IDTP19

We've been lucky enough to be working with @ManBookerPrize nominated author @djdaisyjohnson for the past three weeks - some fantastic insights into creative writing plus today, some lovely signed copies of #EverythingUnder and Fen